Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cited what he called the "Biden rule" on several Sunday political talk shows as precedent for not holding hearings or a vote on Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, which the Sunday show hosts did question. Yet the "rule" McConnell was referencing was, in fact, a call for a "compromise" nominee and was in reference to a hypothetical vacancy by resignation, not a vacancy caused by death.

Media outlets have dubiously likened Vice President Joe Biden's 1992 speech suggesting the Senate Judiciary Committee might not hold confirmation hearings for a hypothetical Supreme Court vacancy following a resignation during an ongoing presidential campaign to the unprecedented determination by Senate Republicans that they will not consider anyone President Obama nominates after Justice Antonin Scalia's death.

Conservative commentators are attacking President Obama's "disgraceful" decision not to attend the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral. But there is no historical precedent requiring presidents to do so, and sources close to Scalia's family reportedly support Obama's decision.

Right-wing bloggers are falsely claiming that Joe Biden is "lying" about having played football at the University of Delaware. Contrary to their claims, several newspapers have interviewed people who knew Biden while he played freshman football at Delaware.

More than 20 years of reporting debunks this claim. For instance, a 1987 Washington Post article retrieved from the Nexis database quoted Biden's father, Joe Biden Sr., saying that he made his son leave the team because of poor grades after his freshman season. A 1987 Los Angeles Times article reported that Biden's college roommate said the same thing (via Nexis):

"He probably never studied as hard as other people did," recalled Biden's roommate at the University of Delaware, Donald Brunner, now a senior vice president with J. P. Morgan. Brunner and Biden both played football as freshmen, but Biden then quit the team, Brunner said, under pressure from his father, who thought that he was devoting too much time to sports and not enough to books.

In 2008, The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware, published an article about Biden's high school and college football days. One of Biden's teammates at Delaware, Jack Istnick, recounted a story from practice (article available for purchase here):

Every now and then, the freshman players would help the varsity practice.

One day, Biden and Jack Istnick were shagging punts for the varsity so it could work on its kick-coverage teams. This was done at full speed with full contact. The ball was kicked to Biden, who got "absolutely leveled," Istnick said, "mainly because I didn't block anyone."

"The [freshman] coach, Scottie Duncan, looked at me and looked at Joe lying on the ground and said to me, 'Don't you like him?' "

The Breitbart post uses an ellipsis-laden quote from a September 8 speech Biden made at Ohio University as evidence that he lied specifically about having played in a football game there in 1963:

"I came ... I was a football player ... I came here in 1963 ... and we beat you Bobcats, 29-12," Biden said.

However, a CBS News video of Biden's appearance, used by NRO, shows that Biden did not actually claim to have played in the game.

During the vice presidential debate, Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Eric Bolling, and Greg Gutfeld suggested that Vice President Joe Biden had been drinking or otherwise compared him to a "drunk." Biden reportedly does not drink alcohol, citing a history of alcoholism in his family.

The Washington Post uncritically quoted Sen. John McCain's claim during the final presidential debate that Sen. Joe Biden had "this cockamamie idea about dividing Iraq into three countries." In fact, Biden introduced a plan to "[m]aintain a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions."

The Politico's Ben Smith uncritically reported Sen. John McCain's false claim during the third presidential debate that Sen. Joe Biden has proposed "dividing Iraq into three countries.' " In fact, Biden introduced a plan to "[m]aintain a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions."

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski asserted that "people overwhelmingly thought [Gov. Sarah Palin] won her debate," while Willie Geist suggested that Palin won by a smaller margin than Brzezinski claimed. However, most polls conducted on the days following the vice presidential debate found that Sen. Joe Biden won. In fact, a Media Matters review of polling sites did not find any national polls that found Palin won the debate.

In his Washington Post analysis, Dan Balz wrote that, during the vice presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin "did not stumble over names of foreign leaders." But Balz did not note that Palin misstated the name of Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, twice referring to him as "McClellan."

On December 7, President-elect Donald Trump named Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Media should take note of Pruitt’s climate science denial, his deep ties to the energy industries he will be charged with regulating, and his long record of opposition to EPA efforts to reduce air and water pollution and combat climate change.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked -- or considered -- nearly a dozen people who have worked in right-wing media, including talk radio, right-wing news sites, Fox News, and conservative newspapers, to fill his administration. And Trump himself made weekly guest appearances on Fox for a number of years while his vice president used to host a conservative talk radio show.